Date: Wed, 08 Jan 1997 21:31:38 GMT
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Introduction to News (using Netscape)
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<h1>Introduction to News (using Netscape)</h1>

<hr>

<b>Executive Summary:</b> <i>This document is designed to give some
tips on reading news to aid students who don't have a strong background
in using newsgroups</i>

<hr>

<h3>What are newsgroups?</h3>

Newsgroups are one of several means for people to communicate using
the internet.  Articles can be posted to a newsgroup by an individual,
and read by anyone who has access to that newsgroup.  In several ways,
news is superior to e-mail in a group setting, in that it:

<ul>

<li>allows you to make information available to people without filling
up their personal inbox

<li>gives them the chance to read it whenever they want to, and come
back to it for reference when they want

<li>results in the storage of only a few centralized copies of an
article, rather than a copy in each recipient's inbox.

<li>has mechanisms built in for organizing articles in threads of
conversation, so that they can be read by topic rather than in the
order they were sent out.

</ul><p>

For these reasons, most class-related conversations are well-suited
for the course newsgroup, since they will be sorted by subject, and
everyone can read the articles whenever they choose.<p>

<h3>Accessing Newsgroups</h3>

There are a number of programs available for reading news, and each
one has its own method of displaying news and allowing you to read it.
Since most people are familiar with using the web, we'll concentrate
here on reading news using netscape.<p>

In order to get to a particular newsgroup using netscape, you simply
need to access the URL: <b>news:&lt;name.of.newsgroup&gt;</b> For
example, the newsgroup for our class is called uw-cs.courses.cse341,
so the URL that you would point netscape to is: <a href =
"news:uw-cs.courses.cse341"><b>news:uw-cs.courses.cse341</b></a>.
There is a link set up on the main course page which will take you
direcly to the newsgroup as well.<p>

<h3>Reading and Posting Articles in a Newsgroup</h3>

Once in a newsgroup, you will see an icon bar (see Figure 1 below),
the name of the newsgroup, a list of the articles which you haven't
read yet, and a second copy of the same icon bar.  The articles will
be organized according to threads of conversation.  That is, whenever
a new article is posted, it will be entered into the list.  Any
follow-up articles will be indented below it, responses to the
follow-up will be posted below them, etc.  Each article has a subject,
the author's name, and its length (in lines).<p>

<center>
<img src = "new.bar1.gif"><p>
<b>Figure 1</b> <i>The newsgroup icon bar</i><p>
</center>

The <i>Post New Article</i> icon allows you to post a new article to
the newsgroup, which will start a new thread.  <i>Mark All Articles
Read</i> will cause all articles to be marked as though you had read
them when you access the newsgroup in the future.  <i>Show Read
Articles</i> displays all articles posted to the newsgroup, whether or
not you've already read them.  <i>Unsubscribe</i> will take this
newsgroup off of the list of those which you are subscribed to.
<i>Subscribed newsgroups</i> will take you to a list of all newsgroups
which you are currently subscribed to.<p>

To read an article, simply click on its entry.  This will take you to
a new page with a different icon bar (see Figure 2 below) and the
article itself.  Each article has a header telling who it was posted
by, when, which newsgroups it was posted to, and the actual text of
the article.  Articles which were follow-ups will also have reference
links to the original articles which they refer to.  To mail a private
response to the article's author, click on his or her name in the
article header.<p>

<center>
<img src = "new.bar2.gif"><p>
<b>Figure 2</b> <i>The article icon bar</i><p>
</center>


The first two icons in the bar will take you to the previous and next
articles in the current thread of conversation (if any).  The next two
icons take you to the previous and next threads of conversation (if
any).  The <i>Mark Thread Read</i> icon will mark all articles in the
current thread of conversation as being read, and will skip over them
in the future.  <i>This Newsgroup</i> will take you back to the
listing of all articles in the newsgroup.  <i>Subscribed
Newsgroups</i> will take you to the list of all newsgroups that you
are currently suscribed to.  <i>Post reply</i> allows you to post a
reply about the current article to the newsgroup.  <i>Mail & Post
Reply</i> does the same thing, and also mails a copy of your reply to
the person whose article you're replying to.<p>

<h3>Posting Articles and Mailing Responses</h3>

If you click on an article's author's name, use <i>Post New
Article</i>, <i>Post Reply</i> or, <i>Mail & Post Reply</i>, a new
window will open up allowing you to type your response.  This window
will have slots for your email address, a recipient's email address, a
newsgroup, a subject, and an attachment.  Depending on which of the
above options you chose, most of these slots will be filled in for
you.  In some cases, you may need to supply a subject.  There will
also be a large space for the message itself.  Type your article or
response and then hit "send".  The message will then be mailed to
everyone in the <i>Mail To:</i> slot and posted to all newsgroups in
the <i>Post To:</i> slot.<p>

<h3>Keeping up with News</h3>

When reading news in netscape, you will need to re-load a newsgroup's
page from time to time to get new articles which have come in.  New
articles may be posted to the newsgroup at any time, but netscape will
only update your list when you actually reload the page.  At that point,
it will show you an updated list of articles which you haven't read.<p>

Additionally, when posting to newsgroups, it generally takes a bit of
time for the article to show up on the group (usually no more than a
minute).  This is just due to the fact that the article must be
circulated throughout all the computers which subscribe to that
newsgroup.<p>

<h3>Testing News</h3>

To prevent newsgroups from getting jammed up with messages saying
"<i>this is a test -- please ignore</i>", a few newsgroups exist for
people to post test messages to.  One of these is called
<b>news.test</b>.  If you'd like to practice with news, do some
posting here, and nobody will mind.  I posted a few articles there in
typing up this page, so you might look for those and post follow-up
articles as practice.  Here's a link to the group: <a href =
"news:news.test">news:news.test</a>.  Put something like "please
ignore" or "no reply necessary" in your message, or you will get mail
back from an automatic mailer telling you that you posted to the
newsgroup.

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<address>
Shamelessly stolen from cse341 Winter '96  <P>
grove@cs.washington.edu </i>(Last update:
	
	<!-- see man strftime for full formatting options-->
	03/21/96 at 02PM
)<i>
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